ABSTRACT
This chapter contemplates the unfolding of co-author Nina Lykke’s queer, posthuman love relationship with and eco-advocacies for the micro-algae, diatoms. Through a sequence of vignettes, Lykke tells the story of the human–diatom companionship that emerged from her eco-spiritual mourning practices which focus on the material assemblages of which her lesbian life partner’s ashes have become part when scattered over the sea in a place where living and dead (fossilized) diatoms abound. To frame the story, Lykke explains how her mourning practices are based on an immanence philosophical understanding of death as a becoming-alien, understood as a becoming-one with the inhuman forces of the cosmos in which everything is dynamically interconnected. The vignettes show how defamiliarization and estrangement facilitate the unfolding of the queer, posthuman love relation. The process starts from Lykke’s acceptance of her dying beloved’s becoming-alien and moves from there to the opening of an alien space for the mourning to unfold. It is described how the alien, diatom presences in the space where the beloved’s ashes are scattered exert a magic attraction; how the engaging of other humans (this book’s co-authors) in diatom encounters there deepen the relationship; and how all this leads to diatom advocacy.
